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Comment by Tamim Ansary, Afghan resident of USA
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:14:27 -0700
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio allowed that this would mean
killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity,
but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage," and he asked,
"What else can we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes later I heard
a TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about these issues especially hard because I am from Afghanistan,
and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of
what's been going on over there. So I want to share a few thoughts with
anyone who will listen.
I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no
doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in
New York. I fervently wish to see those monsters punished.
But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the
government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics
who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in
bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan.
When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler.
And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think the Jews in the concentration
camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this
atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would
love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest
of international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it.
Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow
the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, damaged,
and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that
there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan --a country with no
economy, no food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately
two million men killed during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban
has been executing these women for being women and have buried some of
their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered
with land mines and almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan
people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets took
care of it . Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level
their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate
their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? There is no infrastructure.
Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already
did all that.
New bombs would only land in the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at
least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban
eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide.
(They have already, I hear.) Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled
orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But
flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against
the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would be making
common cause with the Taliban --by raping once again the people they've
been raping all this time.
So what else can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling.
The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. I
think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to
be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill
as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about
killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually
on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden. And not
just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan
to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. To get any
troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let
us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will
other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. The invasion
approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the West.
And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why
he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there.
At the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are Muslims
and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam.
Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute
this entity and he'd be running it. He really believes Islam would beat
the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize
the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the
West wreaks a holocaust in Muslim lands, that's a billion people with
nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's
probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably overcome
--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the war would last for years
and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for
that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?
I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are
the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait
us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish.
We can't let him do that. That's my humble opinion.
Tamim Ansary
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